Sonnet on Rossetti’s painting of Jane Morris as Proserpina (or Persephone).

Persephone

Image: Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s painting of Proserpine 1874. The original is in the Tate Britain. This image is in the public domain: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti_-Proserpine-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

Persephone of raven hair, red lips

and beauty redefined, has me spell bound.

I thought her plain, just Jane; a prosaic lapse

to kidnap her into our poetic crowd.

She clasps her life in one small fruit, red raw

and deadly. Six seeds enough her life to end:

A pomegranate? Why? A metaphor

to downplay what deceit we men defend.

Unbound, she’s free half-yearly. Hades held

her underground till mother’s, Demeter’s,

devotion broke our priapic princes’ hell.

By brush and oil her mortal mysteries,

concealed no more, give life to myth and muse:

the goddess we all painted to seduce.

For more information on the Greek myth: https://www.ancient.eu/persephone/

david d stephen